March 4
If there’s one thing that’s thriving in this weather it’s fungi, and the experiment I started a few days ago to grow oyster mushrooms on recycled paper is working so well that today I felt emboldened to feed my first book to the spawn.
Above: This is the first five days growth on recycled paper pellets
There are a lot of people in Australia who will have lost their books in these floods. This would be one of my worst nightmares, so I’m trying to see how to transform that ugliness and disappointment into something beautiful and life supporting.
I first mixed 20g of hydrated lime in 6 litres of water, then suspended the book in the water so the cover remained dry but the pages soaked up the water. I then let this water drain out of the book.
The next step was to add blue oyster mushroom spawn between some of the wet pages:
I then cut a few holes in a recycled plastic bag, covered them with micropore tape, and wrapped the book in the plastic. Now it’s just a waiting game to see whether the fungi is prepared to consume what it’s been fed.
Funghi are known to be able to transform most toxins. Time will tell.
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